


The North Wind Doth Blow

by AwwKeyboardNo



Series: The Adventures of FarmEye and Company [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint Barton's Farm, Gen, Jossed, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Pre-Iron Man 3, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, and Peggy/Steve, mention of Steve/Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwwKeyboardNo/pseuds/AwwKeyboardNo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Old MacBarton. </p><p>Having Steve Rogers as a house guest is not at all how Clint would have imagined it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The North Wind Doth Blow

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting because I graduated high school on Thursday and I got excited! Yay.  
> This one's a short one, and it's un-beta'd. If someone wants to take care of that for me, I'd be really grateful.  
> Please keep in mind that I had not yet seen Age of Ultron when I wrote the majority of this. This story will probably reflect that lack of knowledge. (Not that I'm planning to stick to that canon anyway.)

There were several things Clint came to learn in the weeks that Steve stayed at Clint’s house.

First and foremost: Natasha was entirely too gleeful to leave Steve at the mercy of Clint and company. She, of course, had a very valid reason to abandon them both after a week--though the snickering was _so unnecessary Natasha, god_. She had a mission that neither of them were allowed in on.

“Fury put me on enforced leave,” Steve had admitted somewhat sheepishly. Clint could sympathize.

The first two weeks spent without Natasha mediating for their polite but stiff conversations was the kind of hell Clint was entirely sure he didn’t deserve. It was mainly spent with Steve hiding in town at the diner and Clint hiding behind the excuse of maintenance. He spent a lot of time chopping down trees.

Which was actually what finally broke the wall of awkwardness between them.

The third week in, Clint woke up to the sound of an ax. Somewhat fearing for the fate of his trees, he threw on some clothes and went outside. He blinked against both the light of early morning and the odd sight before him.

Steve was making firewood.

Which yeah, okay, that was actually a really good thing. Clint had been leaving the wood aside to do just that--eventually--but he’d never gotten around to it. But the question here was, why was Steve doing it?

Of course, as soon as he’d thought of the question, he knew the answer.

“‘S good stress relief, huh?” Clint said. He rubbed the rest of the nighttime crumbs out of his eyes and stepped off the porch.

Steve shrugged  and kept chopping.

Clint worried at his lip and stared at the young man. He was hardly older than Kate--younger than Clint himself had been when he’d been picked up by SHIELD.

He debated on going over to help. Only, the hunched curve of Steve’s shoulders told him that the move probably wouldn’t go over too well. Instead, he sat on the front step and watched.

“The first few weeks after I got here,” Clint said finally, “I found myself wandering out here in the middle of the night. Had to force myself to stop after a while...The trees thinned out too fast, I think.”

Steve’s movements stuttered minutely. Clint plucked a weed from the edges around the steps and tore it to pieces. He sighed heavily.

“I--There were days when I couldn’t breathe, when I didn’t get out of bed at all...I don’t deal with loss the right way, if there is one...C-Coulson--” Clint’s breath caught in his throat for a moment. Steve turned to look at him. His eyes had softened some. “--Coulson, he’d been there through all the other ones...but he wasn’t this time. And I couldn’t deal.”

There was a broken sort of understanding between them. Steve put the ax down. He sat down next to Clint.

“It doesn’t get any easier, does it?”

“Not so much, no.”

Inexplicably, after that, the air lightened between them. They were able to talk a little more easily. Steve relaxed around him, and around Kate, who had somehow migrated into the house permanently. It was then that Clint actually got to know Steve. And he came to another revelation.

Steve was sassy as _fuck_.

He had an opinion on everything. Once you got him going, Steve ran his mouth non stop. Honestly, Clint wasn’t sure where the rumor of Steve being a goodie goodie came from--though he suspected Stark might be involved--but it was far from true.

He wasn’t rude by any means of course. He was a pretty kind guy. But while he avoided any topics that would hurt the two of them, the rest of the time, he was blunt as a spoon.

“You’re dating him, right?” Steve asked one day, after Charlie had given Clint a quick squeeze and left for work. The two of them were peeling potatoes for lunch.

Clint eyed him only a little warily, but smiled and nodded. “Yeah, for about two months now. But I dated him when I was younger too.”

“He’s nice,” Steve said. He smiled, though his eyes were sad. They looked filled with longing and regret. “It’s good that you have someone to make you happy.”

They finished peeling the potatoes in silence.

Later, with super finished and Kate who knew where, Clint broached the subject again. “I’m dating him, and he makes me happy...but part of me, part of me still belongs to Phil.”

Steve looked at him in askance. “You were dating Agent Coulson?”

Clint shook his head and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “He didn’t know. He was seeing a girl down in Oregon, a cellist.”

“Ah,” Steve said. He was silent for a moment. “I know how that is.”

Clint peered at him curiously. He couldn’t mean what Clint thought he meant, right? Steve huffed.

“You people these days. You didn’t invent being queer!” Although his face was firmly serious, the tips of Steve’s ears were bright red at the admission.

“Barnes?” Clint asked softly.

“Bucky,” Steve agreed with a sad sigh. “Peggy knew, I think. And she was okay with sharing my heart. She was quite a progressive dame--lady for the ages.”

Clint sat up and looked at Steve. “You could go talk to her, if you wanted,” he said.

“I’ve thought about it...I just...”

“Yeah, I get it.”

A lot of their conversations kept devolving into silent misery pits of reflection. It was depressing. And Clint was fairly sure Steve had been sent here to cheer the both of them up. If that was true, he was failing and he’d have to try harder.

But was it was somewhat difficult. Though the news propaganda, past and present, had made Steve out to be a charismatic extrovert, the reality was very different.

He was an awkward turtle...Which, of course, was a sentence that Clint would never say out loud, even under pain of death. He liked his good standing in Steve’s eyes.

But despite that, Clint did manage to pull Steve into little things: The two of them going to Des Moines with Charlie and Kate on a weekend to sight see and visit Debby. Going furniture shopping for the many things that Clint still lacked. Hanging with the kids at the diner, and making general fools of themselves.

And one night in November, less than a week before Steve was set to go to DC, Steve and Clint found themselves in front of the fireplace once more, talking.

 

“Phil wasn’t as much of a dork about you as he made himself out to be,” Clint said. “He knew you were more than the shield.”

 

Steve nodded a little, smiling. “I get the feeling I would’a liked getting to know him better.”

 

“Peggy Carter must’ve thought so.” Clint reached over and put another log on the fire. Steve stared at him, eyebrows raised. “She’s the one who recruited him. Said that he had a spark that reminded her of you.”

 

Steve sat back, face blank in surprise. “Huh...”

 

It probably gave Steve something to think about on the plane ride home, Clint pondered later that night.

 

And it must have. Two weeks after Steve’s visit to Waverly ended, Clint got a text.

**Unknown**

_This is Steve. I talked to Peggy...Thank you._

Clint smiled.  


_Welcome. You can come back anytime._  


And, hopefully, he would. 

**Author's Note:**

> Very, very Jossed. Even now, when I haven't even gotten to Iron Man 3 yet. 
> 
> We will be veering even farther from canon soon. You can expect the next installment in the next few months. Stay tuned!


End file.
